Apple Officially Kills Firewire 400

Apple seems to have moved on from the Firewire 400 port we've all come to know and love. Developed and released by Apple in 1995, Firewire 400 (IEEE 1394) become the industry standard for DV camera interfaces. Apple touted the speed of Firewire 400 for external drives and, for a short time, offered the Firewire equipped iSight Web camera. The first three generations of iPods also featured a Firewire 400 interface for syncing and charging.

After Apple released new desktop Macs today, their entire line of computers is now Firewire 400 free. In its place, Apple is utilizing Firewire 800 (IEEE 1394b), which moves data at 786.432 Mbit/s full-duplex. Introduced in 2002, Firewire 800 doesn't appear to be enjoying the mass acceptance that Firewire 400 did with most users using USB 2.0 for external devices.

Farewell Firewire 400, without you, we would have never been able to make our first movie, or connect our old-school iPods to our Macs. We'll never forget how impressed we were when we first learned of your super-speedy specs in the 90s.

Goodbye Firewire 400, we miss you already. Here's a musical tribute to you.

The most amazing thing is, that after all those years the FW400 has been around, it's still faster than much younger USB 2.0 in pretty much all real life applications and way more versatile. Chaining USB devices, anyone?

I know, it's from Cooley High. But how many people would get that reference. So it was technically made famous by Boyz II Men. If you can find an appropriate Zappa song from Joe's Garage with a video done on the Ocarina. Well, I'd be glad to post that on the site.